Make Perfect Mashed Potatoes Every Time with Tyler Florence’s Super-Smart Tip

Food Network Chef Tyler Florence firmly believes that everyone should master how to make mashed potatoes (which honestly is a pretty great idea, considering the fact that Thanksgiving is right around the corner)! But before you memorize any ol’ mashed potato recipe, take a good look at Tyler Florence’s method: To get the silkiest, creamiest mash, Tyler cooks the potatoes in cream rather than water. Allow him to explain.

“Potatoes have a really delicate, beautiful minerality to their flavor profile, and when you cook potatoes in water and you pour that water down the drain, you’ve extracted all the flavor of the potato,” Florence tells PopSugar.

“So what I do with mashed potatoes — because you finish them with cream and butter anyway, right? — is I’ll take that same cream and butter and add that to the potatoes and cook the potatoes in cream and butter. When the potatoes are tender, I put a bowl on the counter and a colander inside that bowl. I pour the potatoes through the colander, and the cream will collect on the bottom. Then I’ll put the potatoes back into the pot and take the potato-infused garlic cream and fold that back into the potatoes, and it’s the most incredible flavor profile. It’s the best mashed potato you’ll ever taste in your entire life,” says Florence.

From there, you can customize your recipe by adding in layers of flavors to the cream with various herbs, spices, and aromatics. And there you have it, people — a super-easy swap that will make your mashed potatoes taste exceptionally better.

Want to steal Tyler Florence’s full recipe for your Thanksgiving table this holiday? Or really any night of the week? Here’s his delicious Grainy Mustard Mashed Potato recipe that’s simple but game-changing. Créme de la créme!